Products sensitive to oxygen, particularly foods, beverages and medicines, deteriorate or spoil in the presence of oxygen. One approach to reducing these difficulties is to package such products in a container comprising at least one layer of a “passive” gas barrier film that acts as a physical barrier and reduces or eliminates the transmission of oxygen through the container wall but does not react with oxygen.
Another approach to achieving or maintaining a low oxygen environment inside a package is to use a packet containing a rapid oxygen absorbent material. The packet, also referred to as a pouch or sachet, is placed in the interior of the package along with the product. The oxygen absorbent material in the sachet protects the packaged product by reacting with the oxygen before the oxygen reacts with the packaged product.
Although oxygen absorbents or scavenger materials used in packets react chemically with the oxygen in the package, they do not prevent external oxygen from penetrating into the package. Therefore, it is common for packaging using such packets to include additional protection such as wrappings of passive barrier films of the type described above. Not only are sachets difficult to use with liquids, they add to product costs.
In view of the packet or sachet's disadvantages and limitations, it has been proposed to incorporate an “active” oxygen absorbent, i.e. one that reacts with oxygen, directly into the walls of a packaging article. Because such a packaging article is formulated to include a material that reacts with the oxygen permeating through its walls, the package is said to provide an “active-barrier” as distinguished from a passive barrier that merely blocks the transmission of oxygen but does not react with it. Active-barrier packaging is an attractive way to protect oxygen-sensitive products because it not only prevents oxygen from reaching the product from the outside, it can also absorb oxygen present within a container wall, and absorb the oxygen introduced during the filling of the container.
One approach for obtaining active-barrier packaging is to incorporate a mixture of an oxidizable metal (e.g., iron) and an activating composition which promotes the reaction of the metal with oxygen, often in the presence of water, into a suitable film-forming polymer. Examples of activating compositions are electrolytes (e.g., sodium chloride), acidifying components, electrolytic acidifying component, or protic solvent hydrolysable halogen compounds like Lewis acids (e.g. aluminum chloride). In the case of nano-metals, little or no activating composition may be needed due their inherent pyrophoricity. The scavenger containing film forming polymer is then melt processed into a monolayer or multilayer article such as a preform, bottle, sheet or film that eventually forms the resulting oxygen scavenger-containing wall or walls of the rigid or flexible container or other packaging article. It will be understood that a film-forming polymer is one that is capable of being made into a film or sheet. The present invention is not, however, limited to films and sheets. Examples of such film forming polymers are polyamides, polyethylenes, polypropylenes, and polyesters.
The container of the present invention also includes bottle walls, trays, container bases, or lids. It should be appreciated that references to the container sidewall and container wall also refer to the lid, bottom and top sides of the container, and a film that may be wrapped around the product such as meat wraps.
One difficulty with scavenger systems incorporating an oxidizable metal or metal compound and an electrolyte into a thermoplastic layer is the inefficiency of the oxidation reaction. High loading of scavenger compositions and relatively large amounts of electrolyte are often used to obtain sufficient oxygen absorption scavenging rate and capacity in active-barrier packaging.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,056, oxygen-scavenging compositions that exhibit improved oxygen-absorption efficiency relative to systems such as iron and sodium chloride are obtainable by including a non-electrolytic, acidifying component in the composition. In the presence of moisture, the combination of the electrolyte and the acidifying component promotes the reactivity of metal with oxygen to a greater extent than does either alone. However, the acidifying component when used alone does not exhibit sufficient oxygen-scavenging properties.
A particularly preferred oxygen-scavenging composition according to the U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,056 comprises iron powder, sodium chloride and sodium acid pyrophosphate, in amounts from about 10 to 150 parts by weight of sodium chloride plus sodium acid pyrophosphate per hundred parts by weight iron.
These conventional scavenging compositions are created by dry blending the ingredients or depositing the acidifying agents and salts onto the metal particle out of an aqueous liquid or slurry.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,056 teaches that the degree of mixing of the oxidizable metal, electrolyte and acidifying components and, if used, optional binder component has been found to affect oxygen absorption performance of the oxygen-scavenging compositions, with better mixing leading to better performance. Mixing effects are most noticeable at low electrolyte plus acidifying components to oxidizable metal component ratios and at very low and very high acidifying component to electrolyte component ratios. Below about 10 parts by weight electrolyte plus acidifying components per hundred parts by weight metal component, or when the weight ratio of either the electrolyte or acidifying component to the other is less than about 10:90, the oxygen scavenger components are preferably mixed by aqueous slurry mixing followed by oven drying and grinding into fine particles. Below these ratios, mixing by techniques suitable at higher ratios, such as by high-intensity powder mixing, as in a Henschel mixer or a Waring powder blender, or by lower intensity mixing techniques, as in a container on a roller or tumbler, may lead to variability in oxygen uptake, particularly when the compositions are incorporated into thermoplastic resins and used in melt processing operations. Other things being equal, U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,056 teaches that oxygen-scavenging compositions prepared by slurry mixing have the highest oxygen absorption efficiency or performance, followed in order by compositions prepared using high intensity solids mixers and roller/tumbler mixing techniques.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,503 teaches the dissolution of an electrolyte in water, contacting the solution with the oxidizable component (e.g. iron) and then removing the water from the composition. While this technique is suitable for salts which dissolve into water, it is not suitable for salts which hydrolyze in the presence of a protic solvent, such as water. Aluminum chloride for instance, will hydrolyze in the presence of water to hydrochloric acid and aluminum hydroxide.
PCT Application PCT/EP2004/008982 submitted on Aug. 11, 2004 teaches that certain protic solvent hydrolysable activating compositions can be placed onto the oxidizable component by dissolving the activating composition into an essentially moisture free organic solution, contacting the solution with the oxidizable metal then removing the solvent.
Japanese Application 10-131379, titled “Iron Powder For Reactive Material and Its Production” teaches placing an enveloping layer containing 0.1-2% of the weight of chlorine in the iron powder which the enveloping layer which becomes a front face of [sic] ferric chloride by contacting hot chlorine or hydrogen chloride gas to iron powder. This way the ferric chloride is made to form in the front face of said iron powder.
This vapor phase-solid phase reaction limits one to the reaction products of iron and various gasses. Because this particular disclosure requires that the oxidizing agent be a reaction product of iron, the practitioner is limited by the kinetics of the iron based salts and iron. Dissimilar metals such as aluminum chloride and iron are not available with this technique.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/196,552 filed Aug. 3, 2005 teaches that the protic solvent hydrolysable activating composition can be deposited upon the oxidizable metal from the vapour stream.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,899,822 teaches the use of an acidifying electrolyte such as sodium bisulfate in the presence of sodium chloride and iron. In this case the electrolyte dissolves into the water as opposed to reacting or being hydrolyzed by the water into a different entity.